Song of the Day: “Mitakunai mono” by KANA-BOON

This week, Dan’s brother Will is a guest host for the Song of the Day (or この日の歌).

When you can’t understand the words, the voice just becomes another instrument.

KANA-BOON is a rock band out of Japan, probably most famous in the west for doing a couple of openings for the Naruto anime. I didn’t discover them through anime, though, instead finding them through Spotify’s brilliant ‘related artist’ feature. They’ve had considerable success in Japan, with three albums breaking the top ten in their national charts.

I’m studying Japanese, but I’m really bad at it. Much to the continuing disappointment of my Japanese coworkers, I’m nowhere near fluent. Thus, when I search out Japanese music, I am able to ignore lyricism and instead focus on the style and melody of the song. One thing has become abundantly clear to me as I’ve sought out Japanese music: I’m a sucker for pop-rock songs.

“Mitakunai mono,” translated to “Things I don’t want to see” or “Things I don’t want to be like” is about as pop-rock as you can get, with tight guitar melodies, cathartic, yelpy vocals, and a headbanging conclusion that makes me want to scream and shout. More than anything, this song gets stuck in my head, the melody running on repeat in my ears throughout the day. Because the west’s perception of Japanese music is colored heavily by the oversaturation of Idol groups, it’s easy to forget that even in the realm of pop there’s great music coming out of Japan.